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After the imposition of the member population limit by Kesmaii, Pancake suggested that the squad be divided into a Full Realism branch and a Relaxed Realism branch, but with both branches reporting to Maveric. This would have given the squad the ability to field 34 pilots. A poll was taken and the pilots assigned, but by now the population of new pilots occupying the RR arenas had stretched the Kesmaii server to its limits and the Skulls worst enemy became not an opposing pilot but the "This Arena Is Full" message. The plan to run operations in the Relaxed Realism arenas was aborted within two weeks of its conception due to the fact that the population in the single RR Europe arena was growing quickly and making it difficult to squeeze a large cohesive unit into the battlefield. When it became apparent that the situation was not going to be resolved any time soon, the Skulls became a "Full-Real Only" squadron. Some pilots left the squadron to run RR missions on their own and the Skulls again started recruiting, but had a strong enough population that they could afford the luxury of closely scrutinizing candidates. "Step 1: Initializing modem. Step 2: Dialing 555-1234. Line busy, trying alternate number. Step 1: Initializing modem. Step 2: Dialing 555-4321. Line busy. Please try again later." In December, 1996, America Online instituted an unlimited access plan which had the unfortunate effect of causing network traffic to shoot through the roof and preventing large numbers of users from entering the gaming arenas. With the holidays and with the problems arising from the network traffic, the Skulls suspended their operations for the month and planned on resuming their operations in January, 1997. The access problems continued in January and more pilots dropped out, the most important being Homer and Jerm, who had risen to command the First Fighter Wing. Pancake was tapped to replace Jerm as the Wing Leader and to also serve the dual role as leader of all of the fighter wings. Egger became the Second-In-Command and a pilot named Ruger led Egger's old bomber wing. By now the Skulls had been flying in the two Full-Real arenas for over a month and were steadily becoming less of a target drone for the more experienced veteran pilots of the Musketeers and the Turkey Ham squadrons. To accelerate the learning curve, Pancake began offering training sessions to pilots looking to improve on their basic combat skills. Initiated as a program for the fighter pilots, a number of bomber pilots took advantage of the opportunity and developed enough skills to become decent fighter pilots. The best example of this was Ruger, who went through a three-step process: from being a bomber wing leader to a spin-whenever-I-turn-the-stick pilot, to a fighter pilot who could give a vet a run for his money.
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